


Stardust

by Enigel



Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Sandman
Genre: Community: fandom_stocking, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-09
Updated: 2009-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for rhaella's fandom_stocking.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Stardust

**Author's Note:**

> Written for rhaella's fandom_stocking.

The man in black combat gear had been looming over John for minutes-hours when John finally managed to focus his eyes on him. He knew he was dreaming, but the pain was still as real as for the past days-hours-years. The man's hair was sticking out every each way and swayed like dead branches in a stream.

"John Sheppard," the gravelly voice called, and the voice pulled him out of his haze, he couldn't fight it if he wanted to. It was calling him by his Name, he thought as he stood up.

The mouth-shaped wounds on his legs oozed blood, and he thought he should feel dizzier than this.

"Look at _me_, John Sheppard," the voice called again.

He looked, though something in him was screaming that he shouldn't, something like an ancient commandment, but he was dreaming and he had no control over his neck craning upwards, gaze drawn to the eyes of the stranger. He had the feeling of two black holes, two swirling vortexes of blackness so deep it would drown him if he looked too much.

"There you go, romanticising physics," he heard Rodney and turned to look for him, but he was still alone with the unnaturally tall man.

"You have lingered too long in the Dreaming, and your dreams are not like they should."

Not black though, something like two glimmers of distant stars flashed at him from those terrifying eyes.

"Is this like some cheap metaphor of hope?" he heard himself say, voice clear and sarcastic, as if he'd not been screaming his throat raw for the last couple of days-hours-months.

"This is an order, John Sheppard."

He wanted to mock the man for not even making the attempt to look like a proper military commander, but deep in his heart he somehow knew that this not-man had the right to give him orders, that order.

"I'm just catching some sleep before they wake me up for torment again," he said, "you want to refuse me that too?"

The man looked like anger personified for a moment, then sighed wearily and pulled his cape around himself tighter.

"Hope is very precious to me, John. Hope can pull you out of Hell. You are not in Hell."

"Well, I must be in a place inspired by it then. And why does he keep biting from me with his eyes?" he asked, not knowing himself what he meant.

The man's mouth was an angry line on his white face - and now John noticed how pale he was. He wasn't white like snow, he was white like bones and bleached sheets crumpled by a night's restless dreams; that thought seemed to want to dislodge a memory from somewhere deep, so deep there were colourless eyeless things swimming around it, with tentacles and teeth, and John shook his head.

"Humans, always meddling with my kingdom. The Corinthian is usually more controlled than this, but some humans have found a way to... invoke him, to use him for their own purposes. You must break free, John Sheppard, if you are to free your friends and continue your story."

"My story?"

"Every man has a story, John Sheppard. Yours should not yet end, unless you fail to free yourself."

"But how?!" John's frustration gaped from his chest with brown-red teeth marks. "If this is your kingdom, why don't you call it off?"

"I could," the visitor mused. "Are you ready to take my sister's hand this time?"

And the memory came to John like a dream that you're sure you've dreamed before, but you don't really recall ever reminiscing before the dream you were in now.

A young woman, pale and beautiful, and smiling.

"Hello John," she'd said. "I'm here to keep you company while you toe the border. Unless you want to take my hand?"

She'd sounded playful, and though John was in so much pain and then suddenly wasn't, her smile had something sharp and otherworldly, and he heard the dark shuffle of wings.

"Too goth for my tastes - no offense meant," he told the tall man what he'd told her then.

"You'll all meet her in the end."

"There's no rush, really."

"Then you must wake up, John Sheppard. Wake up."

"Wake up," she said too.

"Wake up, John," Rodney said too from somewhere off-screen, though John could see his worried frown.

"Wake up," the man with the dark eyes repeated, before he swirled his cape with the twinkle of a thousands galaxies within its folds of infrablack and covered John's face.

* * *

"Wake up," were the words that rang in John's mind when he came to, still in the same miserable dank cell he'd fallen asleep into.

He'd had a really strange dream, like _really_ bizarre, if only he could remember it. He pressed his palms over his swollen eyes, trying to invoke the dream, but only the star-sprinkled blackness behind his eyelids responded. _Wake up_.

"I am awake," he said.

He looked at his hands and legs, surprised when no mouth-shaped wounds were there.

"I _am_ awake."

He tried to get up and felt all the dizziness and exhaustion from the abuse dragging him down.

"Stars. I saw stars. I want to see stars."

He managed to crawl to the wall and drag himself into an upright position. _Wake up_.

"I'm trying!" he heard himself say.

He touched the walls, he circled the small room. It felt gritty and dirty and real.

_Wake up_.

He pulled back his fist, gathered up as much energy as he could in his muscles and breath in his chest and punched the wall as hard as he could.

...except he felt no wall, and his punch met the air, and it wasn't even such a powerful punch, he'd barely moved his hand.

His hand was caught in a restraint of some kind, and his eyes perceived a faint electronic glimmer.

"Wake up," he said, voice coming out raspy and broken and real.

"Oh, crap," he mumbled. Thirst and hunger and nausea swept up over him, and they were real, and when he managed to move his head something snapped and the restraints broke free.

"Firewall breached," an electronic voice began blaring out repeatedly, "intruders at large".

An alarm joined it, and several red lights went on, and then John was punching buttons and touching screens, and then Rodney shrugged out the wires around his head too, and it was business as usual - rescuing people, blowing things up - the story of his life, his story.


End file.
